#uncoffeed...

Here's me having no concept of time, at work four hours early. I didn't mentally note when I'm to show up because we always start extra office coverage at 10 AM. Except when we don't. Thinking like this is how people die. Starbucks ground coffee was on sale at my local market, so I bought Espresso Roast for the office. There's crack in it - I never actually want Starbucks coffee until I drink it and then I think it's so great. Starbucks tastes like nostalgia*. Upon first sip I remember sitting under the palm tree outside my Palm Springs apartment with my friend, or at a table outside the Starbucks on the strip, or in my car at the drive-up window with two poodles and a dalmatian in the back seat. The SBUX employees crowded around the window; they knew the poodles and wanted to know my name. They were hard times, very real times. I love real so much. The brain is a funny thing; I can drink this coffee and conjure up the feel of sun on my skin at 7 AM i...

My memories of Michigan are overcast and gloomy, punctuated by violent thunderstorms and mitigated by the mysterious wisdom of fog. Our neighborhood was situated between two lakes and a pharmaceutical factory; maybe the dismal ennui between foggy days makes them seem more frequent than they were. I learned a completely different appreciation for rain in the desert. That song isn't joking - there's a week-long monsoon that every local celebrates. One of my favorite photographs which exists only in my mind is a view into the neighbors' screened-glass door: they held their four-month-old twins up to the window, showing them the rain pouring out of Heaven, faces aglow (well, the parents; the twins were just sort of staring.) I worked the overnight shift at the hotel in those days. I rode my bike 2.5 miles, gleefully, in the downpour every morning. Sometimes I was flat-out laughing by the time I got home.  There was never any thunder, though. I missed the thunder and light...

The early morning sun bounces off the ripples in my coffee. She dips a finger to retrieve the gnat, its wings like oars on the inky black. "Look - I rescued him." She presents her finger, gnat-wings plastered to her skin, for my inspection. "How can you tell it's a him? Tiny balls?" I snigger. I feel her eyes roll as she focuses on peeling the wings loose. "You're such a pig. Shit. I think I broke one. Shit." I know better than to laugh. She believes - we both do - that every life is precious and deserves an equal chance to be happy.  Happiness does not seem to be the fate for this gnat. But I put my mug on the wooden spool table, and slide across the seat of the porch swing until our legs are touching. "I'm sorry, baby. Is he still alive?" "Yeah." She uses a fingernail from the opposite hand to slide the soggy insect onto the arm of the swing.  "He's walking, or trying to. Damn." She leans again...